Boy, 3, leaves day care alone, walks half-mile to his home

Timmy Crawley, 3, was supposed to be walking to his rest cot at his Hoffman Estates day-care center Wednesday.

But instead, he walked out the door of Small World Children's Center and half a mile to his home, crossing a busy street along the way, his mother said Thursday.

Deanna Roy, 26, his mom, was outraged when she learned her son had made the journey, mostly unaccompanied. She said he was uninjured, but she considers it lucky that cars avoided him as he teetered across four-lane Hassell Road.

She said her son told her "cars were honking at him and it was hurting his ears."

The owners of the day-care center acknowledged Thursday that the boy left. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is investigating.

From what Roy could piece together, at some point along her son's journey, a young girl spotted Timmy and walked him home. There, a neighbor saw him and asked why he wasn't at day care.

The neighbor did not know how to reach Roy, so she drove Timmy back to the day-care center. When Roy got home from work less than two hours later, the neighbor told her what had happened.

Roy called the Hoffman Estates police and together they confronted the day care owners.

Joe Warchol and his wife, Mary, have owned Small World for 22 years, Joe Warchol said Thursday. They supervise about 50 children a day.

Warchol said he helped Timmy use the restroom and told the boy to go to his cot for a nap. Meanwhile, Warchol had been cleaning and left the back door open.

When his wife noticed Timmy's cot was empty, Warchol said he drove around looking for the boy. When he returned empty-handed and prepared to call police, a neighbor phoned to say she had Timmy, Warchol said.

"It shouldn't have happened," Warchol said Thursday. "This is just something he decided to do. We're going to work on whatever we need to work on so this doesn't happen again."

Hoffman Estates police turned the case over to DCFS. According to spokesman Andy Martinez, DCFS has had no previous contact with Small World.

Warchol says Timmy couldn't have been gone more than 15 minutes.

Based upon the accounts of her neighbors and her 1st-grade son, who had a half-day of school and was staying with the neighbor, Roy believes Timmy was gone at least an hour.

But the amount of time isn't the issue, she said Thursday.

"The point is, he was not there and he walked home and he's 3 years old," Roy said.